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35,000 cusecs to reach Jurala

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Heavy flood to Krishna river has forced Karnataka to release water into the river course through the spillway of Narayanpur dam on Tuesday night, almost two months earlier compared to last year. The flood, that commenced with 35,000 cusecs and expected to increase further, is likely to reach Jurala by late on Wednesday night.

The possibilities of flood release to Jurala project from Narayanpur increased early on Tuesday when the authorities at Almatti dam decided to start releasing flood water from the spillway in addition to the water being let into the river course after power generation from Monday.

“Starting with a discharge of 25,000 cusecs from the spillway in the early hours, it gradually increased to about 80,000 cusecs by evening and coupled with the discharge of 45,000 cusecs after power generation, the total flood water being released into the river has gone beyond 1.25 lakh cusecs,” irrigation officials monitoring the flood situation stated.

The decision of Karnataka to release water from Almatti spillway follows an alert received about very heavy rain of about 29.9 cm recorded in Mahabaleshwar area, the place of origin of the Krishna river, on Monday, and arrival of heavy inflows at Kurundwad, the base station of inflows into Almatti, the officials explained. As a result of flood release from Almatti, the inflows into Narayanpur which stood at around 38,000 cusecs in the wee hours increased to over 50,300 cusecs by 8 a.m. and to about 1.24 lakh cusecs by evening.

According to the Central Water Commission (CWC) officials, the flood to Almatti was 1.59 lakh cusecs and it is expected to increase further by Wednesday morning. Similarly, about 83,000 cusecs flood into Tungabhadra dam near Hospet in Karnataka was recorded on Tuesday evening and the CWC has forecast that it would be steady till Wednesday morning. “With both Krishna Tungabhadra, in spate and forecast of flood to another tributary Bheema further improves the chances of flood to Jurala and Srisailam in the next few days,” an Executive Engineer involved in flood monitoring told The Hindu.